


three of swords

by asaiberry



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Study, F/M, One Shot, Reader-Insert, Romance, a sort of glimpse into dimitri's mind while also pining over a lost love between voices in his head, also i liked the imagery i used heheh, his character is rly interesting to write abt, no beta we die like men, originally written for a friend, you and dimitri are reunited after the timeskip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-05
Updated: 2020-07-05
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:34:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25095454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asaiberry/pseuds/asaiberry
Summary: 「 dimitri a. blaiddyd x reader 」a wound is the place where the light enters you. a gift of sorrow.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Reader
Kudos: 76





	three of swords

It’s those warm summer nights under the stars he remembers.

Nothing is easy to remember anymore. He’s been so disillusioned by betrayal and sorrow that the only thing that rings clear in his head anymore besides his delirious lust for revenge is a name that feels far too familiar for him to forget. It’s there between hushed voices and memories that don’t always belong to him, but it’s still there, a soft canticle amid a raging storm.

[Name]. _[Name]. [Name] [Name] [Name] [Name] [Name] [Name] [Name]_

His recollection is fuzzy, but Dimitri recalls the way starlight reflected in your eyes as you stared up at the canvas of deep blue sky. It was always past curfew, and despite Seteth’s looming voice vaguely threatening punishment for breaking rules in the back of his mind, Dimitri ignored it to follow you into the grassy vale beyond the monastery when the world was quiet. You stood at his side, bathed in the moon’s luminescence like an ethereal goddess of legend. Sometimes, his hand would brush against yours while you stargazed together, and his heart missed a beat when you threaded his fingers between his.

You would lay in the grass together and dream. He would hold your hand and point at constellations, explaining the mythology behind them in great detail. He would kiss fruit on your breath, the exotic kinds that sailed all the way across the ocean from Brigid you especially loved. He would drink in your sleeping face if you dozed off and wonder just how a gift as beautiful as you had found someone like him.

It's tragic that these are the only things about you he can commit to memory anymore.

There's a ghost of a sour smile itching at the corners of his lips, but it never comes. Perhaps it's better this way. It's something he lost along the way to hell, among plenty of others. You would never have to see him like this, a husk of a man you used to know with nothing to show but a body of scars over the last several years and his dwindling sense of sanity.

The memories begin to blur after a while. His eyes sting and prickle when he surfaces empty-handed from the world he longs to return to, the one that was kind and wonderful and full of the fragrant milk of lilac, but nothing ever falls. Sometimes, all that follows him is the abysmal feeling of solitude when he returns to reality and realizes that the only ones he can turn to now are simply the phantoms of loved ones that haunt him.

Although he had run out of tears so many years ago, his love for you never dried up.

He still dreams of you on the rare occasion slumber finds him past the fray of paranoia, but this time, you're not laying at his side so he can brush tresses of your silken hair from your peaceful face. You're surrounded in blinding light donning the most wonderful smile he can imagine, and Dimitri swears he can see a halo orbiting you like a crown. He reaches out, but it's never quite far enough, and you disappear among a field of flowers reminiscent of his memories. Tears he can't typically conjure trickle down his cheeks.

Those are the nice dreams.

The not-so-nice dreams are the ones that jolt him awake like a bucket of cold water was tossed over his head. He sees the monastery washed in rivers of crimson and flowers stained by taken lives. He sees flames licking at the lifeless faces of his parents as their bodies perish in front of him. He sees his friends fighting to protect the things they love, and sometimes, he sees you again. Your body there, lying undervine buried beneath rubble. Regardless of how many times Dimitri cries out, pleads for mercy, holds you in his arms, nothing changes, and he wakes up nauseated by the permanent smell of blood that will always linger.

You disappeared during the skirmish at the Church. In the blink of an eye, amid the chaos and brutality of battle, Dimitri lost you. Garreg Mach was abandoned and seized by the Empire. Days had gone by, and still, along with Professor Byleth, there was no trace of you left behind. He waited, and waited, and waited a bit more, but you never returned, crushing the very last sliver of hope Dimitri clutched so closely to his heart while praying to whatever deities he could that you might be alive. His friends moved on, but Dimitri didn't.

Eventually, he found his way back to the Church. It was almost too easy for him to reclaim the monastery alone. Some would say impossible, but fueled solely by a festering rage that had been simmering since the Flame Emperor's reveal, rumors propagated that he was immortal. Nothing more than a sadistic demon capable of slaying scores of soldiers with merely his lance permeated with murder.

This is all he is now. A king and his ruins. A casualty of his own war, plagued by mocking nightmares of loss, grief, and heartache.

Dimitri lies in wait there. He waits for the next slew of victims to mistake him for a dead man ripe in decay until the soldiers meet his blade. He talks to the voices in his head deliriously, but the rats that come sniffing can never be trusted, so they die. At times, he swears he hears your voice, but when he looks around, there's nothing but crumbling stone and dust. The world mocks him.

' _The world is unkind. It's hell,_ ' he tells himself bitterly. The world is unfair.

And he hears your voice again. Soft like the folds of a rose. Gentle like a sweet song.

"Dimitri?"

He sits there, hunched over himself, but the grip on his lance tightens until his knuckles are white.

"I care not to hear you ridicule me any longer," Dimitri grunts. The image of black masses standing before him that he can't see flits through his wild mind feral with hysteria. They jeer and taunt and torment him. "Spare your lies. Get out of my damn head!"

A moment of deafening silence passes. Dimitri wonders if they'll finally give him peace.

"Dimitri."

The frayed edge of wrath he's been toeing finally erodes. This is cruel. His eyes are full of vehemence when they snap upwards. He's expecting a shadow to dart behind a pillar, or a bird to flutter from the rafters, or another stray Imperial soldier to watch with bated breath before his life is taken.

He's not expecting to see _you_ there instead.

At first, Dimitri assumes you're a ghost. One of the drifting ones terrorizing him, making your abrupt absence in his life all the more painful. A spectre he sometimes sees far beyond the meadow where you two would stargaze past nightfall.

The sunlight filtering through the collapsed tower ceiling laves you in its warmth. You're mistaken for an angel at first, the final guide from his death march to save him from perdition. He sees the colour in your skin, the soul glimmering in your eyes, the solid shape of you against darkness. Your hair still shines like golden thread. 

Dimitri stares at you, mouth agape and without words. His lance clatters to the floor. You gaze upon him, a heap of furs and hair and leeriness, with a tenderness that begins to feel familiar again. Something beats in his chest.

"I thought it was you," you whisper.

The sinews of his legs cry out when he stands. His gaze upon you searches for an inkling of proof you're truly there and not a vile trick his mind is playing. Your reach out for him this time. He sees streams of tears glimmer as they begin their descent down the apple of your cheeks. When you step towards him, something primal instinctively makes him recoil until he feels the warmth in your hand when you take it in his own.

"[Name]..." You're _real_.

You comb your fingers through his long hair. He cries at the sensation that brings back long-forgotten memories of your skin knowing his skin, of those times laying in the grass with your hair in tangles while only the stars laid witness to your love, of the days spent with you adorning flowers among his uniform.

He looks upon you with nothing but cloudy love, letting his own face become wet with tears that you graciously thumb away.

"How beautiful you've grown... my dearest," he whispers, gruff but fragile like porcelain.

You shake your head.

"I'm just the same as I've always been. I'm sorry to have kept you waiting, Dimitri."

He wraps his arms around you, bearing himself to the light. You feel small against him. The moment he holds you in his embrace, the shadows behind him slither away. The blood under his fingernails will never cede, but just for a quarter of a breath, he forgets about it. The voices in his head become silent, if only for a short reprieve. He takes a deep breath with his nose buried in your hair. A secret chamber in his heart reignited. Life flows through him once more like the rush of a waterfall. He remembers it all.

"[Name], my darling, I would wait a lifetime for you."

Perhaps the world is kind after all.

**Author's Note:**

> i may be a claude stan but there is also lots of luv for king dimitri <3333


End file.
